


What If

by Marvel_Mania



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Tony Stark Lives, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-21 13:16:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21075503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marvel_Mania/pseuds/Marvel_Mania
Summary: Tony looked out over the lake but didn’t focus on anything in particular. He had just put Morgan to bed and he knew that Pepper was probably waiting for him but she was used to him getting into bed much later since it happened (and before but he had gotten better before this happened). He wasn’t sure how long he was there before someone sat next to him.(Post-Endgame. Tony trying to cope with everything that happened. No one said he was coping well.)





	What If

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I guess if I see something sad, I think 'how can I make this even worse?' other than that I don't want to give away what happens in the story, though it becomes obvious fairly quickly; so, there isn't actually much to put in the notes. Although, I may write a second chapter/epilogue but I'm not entirely sure yet. 
> 
> Usual thanks to my two amazing friends for putting up with me and letting me make you sad with my incredibly terrible writing. 
> 
> As always, enjoy!

Tony looked out over the lake but didn’t focus on anything in particular. He had just put Morgan to bed and he knew that Pepper was probably waiting for him but she was used to him getting into bed much later since it happened (and before but he had gotten better before this happened). He wasn’t sure how long he was there before someone sat next to him. When he looked over he saw Morgan. 

“Didn’t I already put you to bed,” he asked even as she cuddled up to his side. 

“What’s wrong, Daddy?”

Tony had done his best to keep everything away from Morgan. She was still too young to understand, after all. She had been born after the blip and the subsequent resurrection. She was too young to be told about Thanos and everything that had happened so he and Pepper had simply, well, simplified it for her. “It’s nothing you need to worry about, Baby.”

She hummed and just cuddled closer to her father. She knew more than what her parents told her but she knew not to push some things. She remembered going to stay with her Uncle Happy for a few days and when she got home there were a lot of people there. Pepper had changed her into a black dress to match everyone else. Everyone had looked sad, her father and a woman that she didn’t know more than anyone else but Happy and her mom had also looked very sad. 

Everyone had apologized to the woman, who Morgan later found out to be named May, and her dad about ‘the kid’. She remembered being very confused. She was an only child, she remembered wondering what kid the people were talking about and why they were apologizing. She had asked her mom that night what had happened. “Something very sad happened. A young man who your father was very close to died,” she had simply explained. 

“Is it about the boy who died,” Morgan asked and as she looked up at her father’s face. 

“Yes,” he said softly. He blinked once, twice, and on the third time he seemed to break out of his trance. “Come on, back to bed with you, Munchkin.”

Tony put Morgan to bed for the second time that night and she stayed that time. Tony didn’t want to sleep, he knew that if he did he would see Peter’s face. He tended to have two dreams about the boy and he wasn’t sure which one was actually worse. In one they were back on the damned battle field, Peter dying and there was nothing Tony could do. The second kind of dream he had about Peter was that the boy was with May or just generally happy and enjoying life when he would look directly at Tony and ask, “why didn’t you save me?”

That dream always left him the most unnerved. Peter, that self-sacrificing idiot, had taken the stones out of the gauntlet right under Thanos’ nose and then he had made them win. He had used them to make Thanos’ army disappear and had ended up mortally wounding himself in the process. 

“Kid, stay with me. It’s okay, you’re going to be okay,” he had said even as he watched the life quickly fading in Peter’s eyes. 

“We won, Mr. Stark,” he had said. “We won, Tony.”

That had been the last thing that Peter had said, his name. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. The entire reason that Tony helped undo the blip was to get Peter back, not to lose him again. May had been a mess when she found out. She had died, been resurrected, and found out that her nephew was dead in what felt to her was a few hours. He got it, Peter was the only family she had left and now he was gone too. Tony had been the one to tell her what had happened. May, of course, blamed Tony for this. It had been him who got Peter into the big time superhero jobs. Tony hadn’t defended himself or his actions that day because he couldn’t, he thought the same thing as May. It was his fault that Peter was dead. 

In the months following that battle, Tony had searched unendingly for a loop-hole, a way to bring Peter back. He asked Strange but the man said that those were not powered that Tony wanted to mess with. He also said, though Tony wasn’t sure if he was lying or not, that he didn’t know how to do a resurrection spell since they had not been performed for over six centuries. 

“If it had been me, he would be doing everything he could to get me back. He was just a fucking kid, Strange.” Tony had yelled when Stephen had told him that he couldn’t bring Peter back. 

“That may be so but if he came to me, I would have had to tell him the same thing. I cannot undo what has been done.”

“You’re a fucking wizard! You must know something that can bring him back, anything. He was my responsibility, I was supposed to make sure that he didn’t die. But I fail at that, twice. I watched him turn to dust in my arms and then when I finally got him back I saw the life drain from his eyes. You were there, you know that he shouldn’t be dead!”

“Tony, it was his choice,” Stephen said carefully. 

“You saw the future, did you know that this would happen? Did you know that in order for us to win he would have to die?”

“No,” Stephen said simply. 

“No, what? No, you didn’t know this would happen? No, you didn’t know he would die? No, what?” Tony yelled. 

“I didn’t know that he would die at all. That isn’t what I saw in the one future we won. I told him. If anything, it is my fault that he is dead."

"Told him? Told him what? When did you have the chance to tell him anything?" 

Stephen resolved himself before he spoke again. "Everyone who died from the snap was together. We were in a world of our own, where we didn’t remember this or anything that had happened. Peter was the first to snap out of it because he remembered you. He came to me, searching for help, and I told him that you would save us. I told him the future that I saw, and for that, it is my fault that he is dead."

"What future did you see? Did he live in the one you saw?" Tony asked. If Peter had lived in the future that was meant to happen, Tony could still save him somehow. 

"He lived,” Stephen started and continued quickly when he saw Tony open his mouth, "but you didn’t. I told him not to worry, that you would do whatever it took to bring us back and he just knew. He didn’t tell me of his plan but he had told me that he wouldn’t let you die. I didn’t know that he intended to shoulder your fate."

Tony sank to the ground. Peter had died so that he could live. He was the one who should be gone, Peter should still be alive. Why had Peter done that? He was younger, had more years to live; and Tony was old, he had lived a full life. Just like how Yinsen had sacrificed his life for Tony’s so many years ago, he had been ready to do that Peter. 

“Why? Why did he do it?”

“I can’t answer that, Tony. I can only guess,” Stephen said gently. 

“Then what’s your best fucking guess? You spent five years with him in the other world. You must have known him,” Tony demanded. 

“He may have thought that the world wasn’t ready to lose Iron Man. He might have thought that you could do a better job at protecting the world than he could, maybe he didn’t want Pepper to lose you. It could have been any or all of these but I think it was because he loved you.”

“What? Why the hell would you think that?”

“Tony, you are a genius so don’t be an idiot. He followed you to space. It was you who he clung to when he turned to dust. It was you who he died for,” Stephen said. He waited for Tony to say something or do something but he didn’t. He simply stood and left. 

He walked around the city for a while, not thinking much about where he was going, just needing to get away from everything. Before he knew it, he found himself at a bar that he had frequented before he stopped drinking. He knew that Peter wouldn’t want him to but he went in. He stayed in the bar until it closed, drunk to the point where he could barely stand. He hailed a cab and went to the cemetery where Peter had a headstone, even though he wasn’t actually buried there. 

Tony had been the one to pay for it, not wanting May to have to do it but it had been her idea. Not long after the battle Tony had gone on TV and told the world what had happened. “I know a lot has happened and everyone is wondering what exactly happened. The simplest version is that the Avengers were able to undo the snap that caused half of the population to disappear. However, immediately after it was undone, Thanos attacked the Avengers’ Facility. He was looking to redo the snap but completely wipe out all life this time.” Tony paused, needing to take a breath to keep himself from falling apart in front of everyone. 

“The battle was a stalemate for a while until Thanos retained the Infinity Stones. It looked like he would win again until someone saved the day. Peter Parker, or Spider-Man, was able to steal the Infinity Stones and end the battle. However, doing so killed him because no one was meant to wield that power. We owe our lives, everything in this world, to Peter Parker. Peter wanted to look out for the little guy, that is why he kept his identity secret, but his aunt and I have decided that the world should know what he has done. Thank you,” he said and then left. He had gone home and stayed there for nearly a month before braving the world again. 

May had been the one to say that people would want to mourn him and thank him, even though they didn’t know him and having something to thank and talk to would be easier. When Tony got to the cemetery, he sank back to the ground and just cried. It had been almost a year since he died but there were still fresh flowers and different gifts left at the headstone. 

“Why did you fucking do it?”

“Because the world wasn’t ready to lose you yet, I wasn’t ready to lose you,” came from behind him. Tony spun around, still on the ground and saw the mostly solid form of Peter. 

“Kid?”

Peter sadly smiled at him and also got to his knees so that he was level with Tony. “Dr. Strange, he did some kind of spell. He can’t bring me back but he was able to bring my spirit back for a while. I don’t think it will last long, but long enough to see you and talk to you,” he explained. 

“I’m sorry, Pete. It should have been me,” Tony said, wanting to reach out and touch Peter but restraining from it. 

“No, it shouldn’t have been. Dr. Strange was wrong about the future he saw, I corrected it. I don’t regret what I did. You have Pepper and Morgan, even though I didn’t know about her at the time. A kid needs their parents and you’re a great one,” he said with a soft smile. 

“But you’re just a kid. You should be here, living your life. You shouldn’t have died.”

“I made the same choice you would have made, just before you had the chance to,” Peter said with a soft smile. The smile, the simple acceptance of his death, broke Tony’s heart on Peter’s behalf. 

“You should still be here, I’m the one who should be dead. I was ready to die if I had to. I was prepared for it. You don’t walk into a fight like that and expect everyone to make it out, I knew that, I was ready for the consequences.”

“You might have been but I wasn’t, and I doubt Morgan or Pepper would have been either. I was ready to make the same sacrifice, I had about three years to come to terms with what I was going to do. Tony, don’t waste your life because of me. I made my choice, you still have choices to make.”

“Why did you do it,” Tony asked, sounding completely broken. 

“Strange was right, for a genius you are a little stupid sometimes. I loved, love, you. Remember me but don’t beat yourself up over what I did. Go home to Pepper, be there for Morgan.” Tony watched as Peter leaned close to him; without thinking, Tony closed his eyes. “Goodbye, Tony.” 

Tony felt a light brush over his lips. Peter was gone when he opened his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> My defense for not marking this as "Major Character Death" herby follows. Peter died before the start of the story, it gives stuff about the story away, and under the AO3 terms and agreements I did properly warn by tagging this as "Creator Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings."
> 
> I feel like I need to describe this because I got some nasty comments on one of my other stories. I don't know if this will deter anyone from complaining about how I tagged the warnings but at least you have access to my reasoning.


End file.
